In multi-carrier wireless communications, many important system functions such as frequency synchronization and channel estimation, depicted in FIG. 1, are facilitated by using the network information provided by a portion of total subcarriers such as pilot subcarriers. The fidelity level of the received subcarriers dictates how well these functions can be achieved, which in turn affect the efficiency and capacity of the entire network.
In a wireless network, there are a number of base stations, each of which provides coverage to designated areas, normally called a cell. If a cell is divided into sectors, from a system engineering point of view each sector can be considered a cell. In this context, the terms “cell” and “sector” are interchangeable. The network information can be categorized into two types: the cell-specific information that is unique to a particular cell, and the common information that is common to the entire network or to a portion of the entire networks such as a group of cells.
In a multi-cell environment, for example, the base station transmitter of each cell transmits its own pilot subcarriers, in addition to data carriers, to be used by the receivers within the cell. In such an environment, carrying out the pilot-dependent functions becomes a challenging task in that, in addition to the degradation due to multipath propagation channels, signals originated from the base stations at different cells interfere with each other.
One approach to deal with the interference problem has been to have each cell transmit a particular pattern of pilot subcarriers based on a certain type of cell-dependent random process. This approach, to a certain degree, has mitigated the impact of the mutual interference between the pilot subcarriers from adjacent cells; however, it has not provided for a careful and systematic consideration of the unique requirements of the pilot subcarriers.